Tag Archives: George MacKay

Captain Fantastic, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Viggo Mortensen, George Mackay, Samantha Isler, Annalise Basso, Nicholas Hamilton, Shree Crooks, Charlie Shotwell, Trin Miller, Kathryn Hahn, Steve Zahn, Elijah Stevenson, Teddy Van Ee, Erin Moriarty, Missi Pyle, Frank Langella, Ann Dowd, Rex Young, Galen Osier, Thomas Brophy, Mike Miller, Louis Hobson, Hannah Horton.

It is on the face of it a seemingly small moment in cinema but Matt Ross’ intelligent and superbly argued script for Captain Fantastic captures the point of individualism and socialism in a world that only wants you to be a drone, a consumer, a person to whom history means nothing and whose appetite for the material and the edible is verging on obese and dangerously unhealthy. It is with a touch of grace that Captain Fantastic turns that rotten ideology on its head and offers a different view on how to live.

Captain Fantastic, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool. full post

(452 words, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)

Pride, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Andrew Scott, Dominic West, George Mackay, Paddy Considine, Joseph Gilgun, Faye Marsey, Freddie Fox, Ben Schnetzer, Jessie Cave, Liz White, Sophie Evans, Monica Dolan, Jessica Gunning, Chis Overton. Russell Tovey.

America can provide you with the blockbuster, Europe the art, India the beauty but when it comes to truth, justice, the gritty political outpouring, nobody does it better than the British film industry. Blockbusters are all well and good, the stimulation the senses, they blow the mind. Art and beauty is needed to wrap up the human emotion and give it meaning, realism is what brings it together, what makes the cinema goer believe in and restores a balance in a world that is too eager to make sure that division is seen everywhere.

Pride, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool. full post

(714 words, estimated 2:51 mins reading time)

Birdsong, Television Review.

Originally published by L.S. Media. January 23rd 2012.

L.S. Media Rating ***

Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Matthew Goode, Clemence Poesy, Richard Madden, Thomas Turgoose, Joseph Mawle, George Mackay, Rory Keenan, Laurent Lafitte.

Birdsong is a late 20th Century classic and arguably, to some critics, Sebastian Faulks’ finest novel to date. To fans of the book though who have been desperate to see this First World War drama brought to a larger audience, they have waited, patiently or not, since 1993 and it has to be said it was almost worth the wait.

Birdsong, Television Review. full post

(526 words, 1 image, estimated 2:06 mins reading time)

Birdsong, Part Two. Television Review.

Originally published by L.S. Media. January 31st 2012.

L.S. Media Rating **

Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Matthew Goode, Clemence Poesy, Richard Madden, Thomas Turgoose, Joseph Mawle, George Mackay, Anthony Andrews, Rory Keenan, Laurent Lafitte.

The second part of Birdsong, written by Abi Morgan, which worked well in parts in the first installment, unfortunately descended into cliché ridden and almost predictable deaths for some of the major characters within the plot. Even for those who have read Sebastian Faulks’ excellent novel it seemed to go from convoluted to create a dull ending.

Birdsong, Part Two. Television Review. full post

(489 words, 1 image, estimated 1:57 mins reading time)

The Best Of Men, Television Review. B.B.C. Television.

Eddie Marsan as Dr. Ludwig Guttmann. Picture from the B.B.C.

Originally pulished by L.S. Media. August 17th 2012

L.S. Media Rating ****

Cast: Eddie Marsan, Rob Brydon, Naimh Cussack, Richard McCabe, George MacKay, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Ben Owen-Jones, David Proud, Leigh Quinn, Daniel Wilde.

Perhaps it took the Best of Men to prove that nobody should ever be written off just because they received spinal injuries during the war.

The B.B.C. Television drama The Best of Men looked at the lives of the pioneering work of Dr. Ludwig Guttmann, a German Jewish refugee whose care and compassion for those he found in the spinal unit of Stoke Mandeville proved a thorn in the sides of the British doctors.

The Best Of Men, Television Review. B.B.C. Television. full post

(429 words, 1 image, estimated 1:43 mins reading time)